When You Can’t Accept Your Financial Stability

Photo credit: Joanna Bourne, CC BY 2.0.

Today’s must-read essay comes from The New York Times, and it’s called “I Have Post-Brokeness Stress Disorder.” Damon Young, of Very Smart Brothas, writes about how difficult it is for him to accept his current financial stability — in part because he views it as temporary:

[…] I still feel the same as I did that morning my car was taken. I don’t have impostor syndrome. I believe I deserve my success. I am, however, waiting for the other shoe to drop. I’m so used to mundane financial setbacks — an overdraft fee here, a cellphone temporarily disconnected there — that my new status is too surreal for my brain to accept.

It took me about a year, after I finished paying off the $14K of credit card debt I accumulated during my most recent period of brokeness, to start feeling like there wasn’t another shoe waiting to drop at any time. I know the shoe could still hit the ground, but I’m building up my savings account (and my career) in the hopes that it won’t — or, at least, that I can postpone the next round of brokeness for as long as possible.

Read the essay, and then let us know what you think.

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